The Baseball Pipeline

Rocky Mount Parks and Recreation will send multiple teams to the Tar Heel State Championships.  Five teams from 7 to 12 years of age took part in this weeks district six tournament played in Rocky Mount.  Two won their division, two others finished second and one of those lost out to another Rocky Mount team and the last team finished third.  The Rocky Mount area continues to put quality teams on the field when they hit the playoffs.

If you consider the two senior league teams that is 24 players that the recreation department has sent into the Tar Heel Tournaments. You must remember that not of these all stars are 12 as two or 3 are 11 years old.  All Stars teams to a certain degree are like the regular season teams.  All teams have three players that could play on any team they are just that good.  Then there are about five that are good ball players and three that when they face other all star pitchers ride the pine in the playoffs.

Now players come from all over to play in Rocky Mount so when these all stars make their way up to high school those 12 players are divided just in Nash County by six high schools.  Throw in one or two that might be playing at SouthWest, Tarboro or even North Edgecombe those all stars at 12 years of age are scattered all over the place depending on what school district they live or private school they attend.

It has been 2008 since any Rocky Mount area high school won the state title in baseball and since then not many have advanced very deep into the playoffs.  Yes the city of Rocky Mount provides plenty of players  that as they progress through high school they are extremely good high school players.  In order to make a state champion in high school there must be a year when they all seem to go to the same school.  When you look at the college players  that team put out in 2008 more than half the team played D-1 baseball and higher.

Of course if we want to win the State High school baseball championship every year the answer is built a county high school with 5,000 students where just about every player who went through the little league program stay together in high school.  Obviously only 16 or so could play high school ball that way so the answer in not a bigger school.  We want as many of our children to have extra circular activities in school as possible.  Crime statistics show a child that is idle is the one committing the crimes.

So we must wait for the next time when one of our high schools gets an extra amount of extra special players to help lead them to another state title.  Who knows those  7/8,9/10,11/12 year old representing us in Williamston just might be the next crop of state champions once they hit high school.